Palm Pre vs. iPhone 3GS vs. Windows Mobile 6.5

Well, here we are for the comparison of Industry’s best Smartphone Mobile platforms, iPhone with Palm Pre and Windows Mobile. (who cares about symbian?) We are not considering Android yet, in future, that will be included.

We will do a direct Feature to feature comparison between iPhone 3G S, Palm Pre and the Windows Phones powered with Windows Mobile 6.5 will help you decide who wins:

iPhone 3G S (OS 3.1.2)

Palm Pre

Windows Phones 6.5

Display Resolution

320×480

320×480

Up to 800×480 in some models

Processor

600Mhz

600Mhz

100 – 450Mhz (mostly)

Display

Capacitive

Capacitive

Resistive

Accelerometer

Yes

Yes

Yes

3G, GPS

Yes

Yes

Yes

WiFi, MMS

Yes

Yes

Yes

Cloud-Sync Service

MobileMe

Palm Profile

My Phone

Applications Store

App Store, Cydia, Icy

App Catalog

Marketplace for Mobile

Applications

around 60,000

less than 200

20,000+

Multitasking

No (jailbreak only)

Yes

Yes

Multi-touch

Yes

Yes

No

OS Updates

Yes

Yes

No

Camera

3 MP, AutoFocus

3 MP

Up to 5 MP in some models

Video Recording

Yes, with editing

No

Yes

Cut/Copy/Paste

Yes

Yes

Yes

Physical Keyboard

No

Yes

Yes

Virtual Keyboard

Yes

No

Yes

Changeable Battery

No

Yes

Yes

Storage

Up to 32GB

8GB

16GB with expansion slot

Lets go and compare them feature by feature.

Inbuilt Search. The first feature people wondered about was the Pre’s “Universal search” function. This is a single search bar that allows keyword hunts in “web and user’s applications, contacts, and dialing information,” as well as web pages. iPhone 3.0 brings Spotlight, almost directly from OS X it seems, to the iPhone, with searching within Calendar items, iPod tracks, Notes, contacts, web pages, email headers (but not message bodies) and applications. This last is pretty powerful, since the Spotlight UI is accessed quickly by a gesture from the home page, letting you navigate to an App easily if you had, say, 100 apps installed. Lastly, Windows mobile has no search feature except for Contacts, mail that too not accessible from desktop in single click.

Multi-Tasking. What some call multitasking, Palm calls “multiple activities,” Apple calls it background-running apps. In the press event to announce the Pre, Palm splashed this feature as a direct snub at Apple–the current iPhone firmware forbids it. Even Apple’s “push notification” feature, a half-way house for background apps, was mentioned months ago, then disappeared totally. But iPhone 3.0 will bring push notifications, and Apple was careful to explain why there’s no background app-running: battery life. Apple’s said it had tested running background apps on BlackBerrys, Windows Mobile devices and so on, and in every case “stand-by time dropped by 80% or more.” That’s a deliberate snub right back at Palm, especially since Apple qualified it by saying an IM app running push only reduced the iPhone’s stand-by time by 23%. Though Jailbroken App “Backgrounder” actually run apps in background, but it’s not officially supported by iPhone. Coming to Windows Mobile, It can always run multiple programs simultaneously. The switching between applications is through standard menu. switching is pretty decent in speed.

Navigation. Palm’s Pre has full GPS navigation functions, with turn-by-turn directions. But it’s an extra, App from Sprint Navigation. The current iPhone specifically excludes turn-by-turn navigation, effectively shutting off full GPS functions. Firmware 3.0, however, does allow it, with a single condition: “bring your own maps.” That’s pretty much an open door for third party developers to get in on the iPhone nav goodness. WM has large no. of good navigation softwares. You will see lots of applications it their market place that let you do turn-by-turn navigation.

Calendar and Syncing. The Pre uses Palm’s Synergy to link up Outlook, Google and even Facebook calendars to one location, whereas iPhone 2.0’s Calendar app is more than a little limited–you can’t even invite meeting requests from the phone. The new firmware 3.0 adds support for Exchange, CalDAV and .ics formats for subscribing to different calendars, and it’ll let you create meeting invitations. CalDAV is supported by Google Calendar, Yahoo Calendar beta and others, making it a now potentially fully-synchronized Calendar app. The WM 6.5 undoubtedly supports this one by default. The integration with Exchange is homegrown so pretty good.

Camera. The Pre has a 3-megapixel digital camera with an LED flash light The iPhone’s 3-megapixels seems slick with Auto-Focus ( and Tap to focus). In WM you get wide range of hardwares to choose from. You can get cameras from 2-5MP over standard HTC devices.

Video Recording: With iPhone 3GS, official video recording comes to iPhone though it was possible with jailbreaking earlier too. Also, it exposes a good video editing and upload on the fly. Pre has no application yet to do a video record. It might be supported in future via firmware upgrade. All WM have inbuilt video recorder though the quality depends from vendor to vendor. And there is none that can edit videos in practical. Few will feature HD 720p recording too.

Bluetooth Stereo A2DP. The Pre, iPhone 3GS has A2DP (even iPhone 3G, iPhone 2G doesn’t).As far as WM is concerned, you get that in all the phones. Even the base models will have them.

Copy and Paste. The Pre has it and iPhone 2.0 doesn’t, but iPhone 3.0 has a fantastic copy-paste function that lets you copy text almost from anywhere to anywhere, and if you do soemthing wrong, it has a neat “shake to undo” trick. WM has fair support of copy and paste though not as extensible as the one on iPhone 3.0.

On-Screen Keyboard: Palm Pre doesnt have it and iPhone has industry’s best onscreen keyboard implementations. Auto-landscape make them slick and easy to use with bare finger. On WM, most on-screen keyboards are glitchy and tiny. They need stylus most of them and the result, low words per minute.

Hardware Keyboard: Here WM and Palm Pre are clear winners, both of them have Hardware keyboard. Since iPhone has fair on-screen keyboards, need of hardware platform is never felt that amplified.

Battery: Palm Pre has average battery life. iPhone 3G S promises to improve battery life over last iPhone 3G making it the best battery juice device. Again, WM environment is all dependent, but one of them gives better battery than 3G S.

Processor and Graphics: iPhone 3G S and Palm PRe use the same ARM cotex processor underclocked to 600Mhz though capable of 750Mhz. WM ranges from 100Mhz to 450Mhz, not as powerful as the former hardware platforms. Graphics wise, undoubtedly 3G S kicks out both Pre and WM 6 devices. 3G S’s support for OpenGL with accelearted graphics capability is designed for serious handheld gaming. Infact, it will pose a threat to PSP, Nintendo DS.

Applications: Windows mobile is fairly mature mobile platform with various no. of applications. But the recent last 2years buzz of iPhone has kicked every one out. It has whooping 60k+ applications to choose from (Jailbroken applications included). There is a lot utilities and apps to choose from. Palm Pre being new to the market with SDK just out, has very few applications, though scenario should change in the near future.

While looking on the Youtube, I have found these little comparison videos between iPhone, Palm Pre and HTC Touch HD running Windows Mobile 6.5 which are worth checking out:

The Bottom line is that the competition between iPhone, Palm Pre, and Windows Phones is good for us the consumers as this is what keeps Apple, Palm, Google and Microsoft on their toes and on top of their game. The competition brings the best out of them and innovation is a virtue.

What is the best, is totally upto the kind of user we are targeting. A developer, power user might like iPhone than anything else. A business user with low app demands might choose WM. It’s all on the personal preference. If you are like me, I would rate iPhone 3GS as the best all rounder phone.

The Toshiba TG01 Windows Mobile phone runs at 1000 Mhz, so thats one item that is wrong.

Next the Samsung Omnia ships with 16 GB built-in storage + microSD expansion, so thats another item you have wrong.

Thirdly, the Samsung Omnia 2 does have video editing – thats just software after all.

Lastly, Windows Mobile does come with updates. They are called Adaptation Kits, like service packs, and the most recent one 6.1.4 brought IE6 to Windows Mobile 6.1. They are provided as ROM updates by the OEM, and in the early stages of a device’s release are quite frequent.

VA:F [1.9.22_1171]

please wait...

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

VA:F [1.9.22_1171]

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

steve

kooleo.
i wonder wat wud b windows mobile 7 like? crap?

VA:F [1.9.22_1171]

please wait...

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

VA:F [1.9.22_1171]

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Ravin

iPhone rocks!
BTW, Palm Pre will add video recording may be in their 3rd firmware update
.
@Surur
WM updates are different. they are patches for bugs not much improvements unlike iPhone, so author is correct.

VA:F [1.9.22_1171]

please wait...

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

VA:F [1.9.22_1171]

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Surur

@Ravin,

As mentioned, AKU’s also bring features, like A2DP in WM5 and IE6 in WM 6.1.4

VA:F [1.9.22_1171]

please wait...

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

VA:F [1.9.22_1171]

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Surur

You should really get a WM person to write that side, as its clear you are not very knowledgable about WM.

@Surur @Ravin
WM is decent platform, nothing to hate about it.
yes its very unpopular after iPhone is out.

Palm pre is a better platform for gaming compared to a TYPICAL WM phone. A typical WM phone is <400MHZ (in fact 95% of WM phones falls under this category). Highends are still very rare in current market.
Try using Pre SDK with the simulator, the kind of Powerful API and diagnostics (with detailed performance profiling) it gives to the user, developing a game is Slick!
on the other hand MS never did a good SDK for WM. It has basic profiling and a fair SDK.
Ofcourse iPhone 3.1 SDK is most advanced yest, and thnx to openGL, it has gone further.

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]

please wait...

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Surur

@Ravin – about 20 million people last year – more than who bought the iPhone in 2008.

Thats who cares.

Do you specialize in being ill-informed?

VA:F [1.9.22_1171]

please wait...

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

VA:F [1.9.22_1171]

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Surur

@TaranFX – I would challenge you to find a HTC phone released in the last 2 years which ran at less than 400 Mhz, and in the last year which ran less than 500.

the problem with windows mobile is lack of uniformity between devices. For example, while Toshiba TG01 and THC phones both have accelerometer sensors, they work differenctly. Therefore, buying a software for HTC windows mobile will not work for the toshiba. THat means that each windows mobile phone is, in practice, a completly new phone even if it has the titile “windows mobile 6.5”. All of the windows phone are partially incompatible with each other. They have completley different buttons, different settings and require individual software design to make the features work. On the other hand, iphone is an iphone! While it may lack some features the other operating systems have, practically all the iphones work the same.

For example, I have the toshiba tg01. While HTC g sensor has some games, those games will not work on the toshiba. Both are windows mobile 6.5! Similarly, a software that adjusts the backlight on the THC will not do the same on the toshiba. Yet again, both are Windows Mobile 6.5! What more, the toshiba is almost lacking any bottons… any software designed for the other windows mobile phones was designed to work on a different botton arrangement… again lack of uniformity between windows phones. I have a software that can change the button functions, but again it only work on some windows phones and not other despite all proclaiming the “windows mobile 6.5” operating system.

If there is lack of basic uniformity in the features that make Windows Mobile so special than there is no point in buying that OS. What's the point of a g sensor if the software maker has to redesign the software for each and every windows mobile phone (different software for Acer, toshiba, HTC….)?

VA:F [1.9.22_1171]

please wait...

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

VA:F [1.9.22_1171]

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Men’s Rights Groningen

I’m so glad that Microsoft finally returned all of Windows Mobile’s features to Windows Phone, now they can finally move forward… though taking on the MANY NOKIAN features’ baggage shall make the merger of all O.S.’es a long task…